One of the main problems when investigating the Elliott Smith’s case is the small amount of people willing to speak to me and the even slimmer number of people willing to go on the record…

But when someone speaks to me, whether this person wants to stay anonymous of not, I am all ears…. And I report when the person is in agreement with it. I know that some readers have heavily criticized that kind of reporting in the past, saying it is just hearsay… but what’s the difference between me saying ‘a source close to Elliott, or a friend told me this’, and W. T. Schultz writing basically the same thing in this book ‘Torment Saint’. He also doesn’t always name his sources (for examples: ‘According to two different people I spoke with who were at the gig and deeply in the know’, page 15,… ‘One night he actually dreamed of Courtney Love, according to a different friend’, page 3… ‘In fact, according to another close friend, Smith was obsessed’, page 14). Are people more willing to trust him because it is printed in a book? It is ridiculous, and a lot of his named sources can also be considered as hearsay, there is simply no difference, and I can also prove any conversation I report about, effectively took place, if needed.

I got in contact with a musician who knew Elliott and Jennifer Chiba and this person wanted to let me know about a few things. She was around the California music scene at the time, although she has now moved to another state… She even knew Elliott when he was younger as she was living in Portland when she was young. This person was around and one of the most important things she told me regards Jennifer Chiba’s restless behavior. She is certain that Chiba was not ready to quit partying and give up on drugs, when we know that Elliott was ready to change his life after the painful treatment at the weird Beverly Hills clinic, the Neurotransmitter Restoration Center. According to this musician, Chiba was still doing alcohol and drugs (‘booze and speed’) and this is actually totally compatible with what we already know, as we have the formal proof that Chiba had received a DUI on August 30th 2003…

‘Jennifer Chiba has a long history of volatile relationships, and excess partying’ the musician told me, and she even suggested to me that Chiba may have been drunk or high on October 21st. But if it was the case, how could the police have missed that? Why didn’t they test her if she looked drunk or high? But did she? Was it negligence or laziness? Or is Chiba really a good actress as this person told me? There is a solid rumor Chiba waited some time before calling 911… did she do that to let the effect of her high dissipate a bit? At this point, any speculation is possible but you have to wonder if she really took a shower (to come down?) as it was sometimes reported.

It would be easy to dismiss a person telling you something bad about another person, but the problem is that this musician is the umpteenth person to tell me about Chiba’s erratic and violent temper… should I sum up once again all the stories?

– A sound engineer told us that, back in 2002, when he was working on a project for Andrew Morgan at Elliott’s New Monkey studio, he got the surprise to see Elliott disappear for 2 to 3 days. When he resurfaced, he said he had a fight with his girlfriend (Jennifer Chiba) and told ‘the story about how she chased him around with a knife during an argument .’

– An Elliott Smith’s female fan had the misadventure to be befriended by Jennifer Chiba after Elliott’s death. She even stayed at her place in LA and soon discovered that Chiba was sleeping with her model boyfriend when she was away. The fan nevertheless kept in touch with her ex, and he told her about his rocky relationship with Chiba. This is what she wrote: ‘he would tell me stories about how she would get drunk and scream at him and throw bottles and glasses and threaten to kill herself. This was like a weekly occurrence and he didn’t realize what he’d gotten himself into. He was scared a lot of the time and she made him feel guilty like it was his fault. She was so manipulative.’ […] ‘She got drunk and crazy a lot, he said.’

– I also communicated with a musician who has now moved out of state but was around the Silverlake scene in 2003. He told me that some musicians witnessed domestic abuse, and discussed about it: ‘It wasn’t too long after Elliott died and he said “That bitch was getting physical with him in fights.” And somebody else said something about it and he said “Seriously! She was like a domestic abuser!” And then maybe a couple of years later, 2006-ish, I heard someone say that he had witnessed her hit him once. I don’t know how serious it was, I just overheard it at a party and logged it mentally’

– And there is Caroline, ex-owner of the recording studio, which shared the same building that Elliott’s New Monkey studio. She was visibly terrified of Jennifer Chiba and felt compelled to write long posts to tell her story, and her encounter with the woman whom she called ‘the force’… you actually can read everything she wrote in November 2003 here. If she didn’t really witness real violence, her melodramatic description of Chiba is quite interesting: ‘There was a dark force in Elliott’s life and it wasn’t him, drugs or depression, as far as I could tell. But this is only my perspective so I could be wrong. It even had a name, but I won’t say it and I won’t even give it a sex because that’s not the point. The point is the dark force did exist for whatever reason and it did have a huge part or hold on Elliott’s life.’ […] ‘The force had black hair and dark squinting eyes and the whitest of skin, beautiful in a haunting scary, kind of way. The force seemed arrogant and entitled and that made me uncomfortable.’

– There is also this testimony I once found on a website… I agree, not a very reliable source as I never directly talked to the person contrarily to the other ones, but it just adds up to the picture. This was posted shortly after Elliott’s death: ‘she’s [the poster’s wife] known his girlfriend for sometime, first, she’s a fucking manic nutball, second, she and Elliott have had this emotional, dramatic table turning, door slamming, screaming “I hate you” type of relationship. typical for a manic and a depressed individual right? The wife has witnessed it herself in a bar one night. they were having one of those episodes. he had been making strides as of late, was off the depression pills and really on the upswing. during this episode she was really pressing him, for one reason or another.’

– Lastly, a few years ago I met Abigail Russell who had known Jennifer Chiba since 1999. Among a few revealing things, Abigail told me that Chiba had threatened all her boyfriends with sentences like ‘I am going to kill myself’, and this amazingly echoed some of the previous stories.

We have to keep in mind that all these info come from totally independent sources. So after being aware of all these stories going in the same direction, it is difficult to dismiss this musician, who even went to the police and told them to do more investigation. And this is the worst part of all this, this musician reported Chiba’s party behavior and history of volatile relationships to the police, but did they even pay attention? If I was able to gather all these stories by myself, why didn’t the police find something compelling in Chiba’s past? But did they even investigate?

Andrew Perer

As G-d as my witness, I hung out with Chiba and Elliot in the years leading up to his death. He tried to quit drugs so many times and never found any psych medications that worked and kept him clean. I absolutely clearly remember doing everything she could to keep drugs and people he did drugs with out of his life. It was a volatile relationship, but so are many. He chose to stay in the relationship of his own volition. I known Chiba for 10 years at that time and she was very dedicated to Elliot. If you want me to give a thorough cynical reason why it wasn’t in her interest to kill him, just remember that she really wanted to get married and start a family and stop working. She had huge student debts he planned to pay off, but she truly loved Elliot. That was just gravy. The dumbest thing she could do was kill him if she wanted to destroy her future. She wanted nothing more, I mean nothing more than to travel with Elliot and help support him and his career and the bonus was that she wouldn’t have to go back to her exhausting therapy job. Is that cynical enough for you, all you haters? Elliot could take care of himself. If he wanted to dump her, he would have in a second, But they were working on there relationship and I know she spent all her time managing his day to day life to make sure he showed up sober to shows when he wanted to get clean. She wouldn’t have thrown away a chance at that life for anything. Period.

Xand

Alyson

You admit it yourself, it was a volatile relationship, and she was interested by his money to reimburse her debt and stop working. It never occurred to you that he wanted to leave her and that he told her that day? She even admitted it to someone at Elliott’s funeral, she said Elliott wanted to leave her. And I heard it from different people.
She thought she was entitled to his money and that’s why she sued the family for $1 million. What a loving way to grieve.

Pippy

Chiba paints herself as the nurturing chief-cook-bottle-washer and homemaker (and manager who booked all of his gigs?), but, in reality – yes – Elliott held the keys to her future; and he wasn’t exactly someone who was comfortable with others doing the steering for him, or acting as gatekeeper. That is not to say that he wasn’t generous or tolerant of the ambitions of others. He was well known for helping others along. Especially anyone involved with music. (Don’t forget – he was also producing her band at the time and that it wasn’t turning out to be a harmonious collaboration either.)

Andrew – oddly enough, a lot of other friends who weren’t drug buddies (old and new) couldn’t get through to Elliott when Jennifer was “protecting” him. By “getting through”, I don’t mean they couldn’t talk sense into him at the time; I mean they literally could not contact him to speak with him directly. He didn’t get all of his phone messages. By other people’s standards, her protection seemed to cross into control territory.

And, that DUI Jennifer had before Elliott’s death also exposes a double standard on her part. Especially when she, too, was receiving psychiatric care at the time of E’s death, was she not? Most everyone focuses on E’s issues with drugs while dismissing Jennifer’s own original involvement with his usage.

When taking into account Jennifer’s description of the relationship and considering E’s nature, it’s really not too difficult to see how a power struggle would have ultimately surfaced. The fact that his manner of death was ruled undetermined; and, that the person who first established the suicide narrative in the police reports and in the media happened to be the only person present at the time of E’s injury (and who also handled the knife) are of import. These facts beg an open mind on the part of anyone with a sense of fairness — not to mention justice.

One Whose Been Victim As Well

She had Borderline Personality Disorder. She is a classic description of this pathology. These people latch onto sensitive, caring individuals, and use them for various purposes. I say this because, her behavioral patterns are like a textbook example of the disorder. A huge percentage of women in prison have this disorder. Not knowing whether it is murder or suicide is not a function of the fact that this pathology is plainly evident in her behavior. Therefore, it is more likely, of the two possibilities here, that there was a murder then there was a suicide. The police’s ignorance of this, and the gynocentric biases of the courts, are some of the reason why there was no “investigation”, as well as the bias against drug abusers, etc. This is, at least, a cold case that needs follow up by a more experienced and dedicated investigator.

Alyson

Someone

Borderlines are extremely sensitive and, yes, they can get violent. But generally they will self harm. They tend to be empathic. Sometimes they have TOO much compassion/feelings. Also they crave for love but at the same time they’re afraid to be in a relationship. Not her case. This woman seems more like a narcissist to me.

Cat

Megan

For someone who apparently knew both Elliott and Chiba, the first commenter sure can’t seem to spell his name right.

As a preface to what I am going to say (only to add credibility to my observation), I have a post graduate in crime scene investigations & forensics. A large part of my program was focused on detecting deception, statement analysis and criminal profiling.

When reading the first comment under this article….it screams “fake”. Not fake as in this person didn’t know Elliott and that woman but fake as in it’s Jennifer herself posting.

The excessive excuse making for Chiba, seemingly speaking as if this person was inside her head and knew “exactly” how she felt
The main red flag however… the misspelling of Elliott’s name…much like the apparent suicide note.
If the coroner made a mistake when doing the report, they would have corrected it by placing a single stroke through the error, correcting it and initialing it…the unconscious misspelling of Elliott’s name (only one t) is a mental distancing, guilty parties do that as a way to rationalize “I didn’t kill Elliott smith, not talking about Elliott Smith …”

Just my observation, I absolutely adore Elliott and his hauntingly beautiful music so I had to jump in.
If I could get my hands on his case file I’d make sure that the truth came out, even if it conclusively pointed to suicide.

Candac

GH

To reiterate, the missing “t” was a clerical error/ error in transcription on the part of the investigators. The authorities are in possession of the post-it and no one else has seen it. (That is, beyond the only witness who – according to the investigators’ narrative – first discovered it on the kitchen table just as she sat down to speak with them on 10/20/03.)

NotTheNameThatUcallMeWith

Sorry but I would expect his self appointed “manager” and gatekeeper to spell his name correctly if she were going to forge his suicide note so this whole controversy over the mispelled named actually does nothing but muddy the waters when pointing to chiba. However the explaination provided by the investigator above about a perpetrator’s guilty subconscious sounds plausable.
But if you ask me thr most compelling info about that night is noted by chiba and the coroner and its clear as day right there like a timeline for anyonw to put together i dont gdt why she’s nit in jail for at least deparaved indifference or neglegent homicide if what she said was true (which i dont think is true). I think she murdered him and I’ll get to that but first what she admitted to is 1. She said he was fighting with her and threatening to kill himself so she locked herself in the bathroom and she heard a loud scream coming from the kitchen so she GOT A SHOWER to calm down .knowing that he had tried to commut suicide in the past, she ignore him further as he pounded on the door. Then finally she came out saw the knife in his chest and instead of callibg 911 first she pulls it out which causes him to start bleeding out. Then she calls 911. Naaa she should have gotten in trouble for ignoring his threats of suicide and ignoring the screams of self injury and then touching the knife without consulfing authorities. Thats IF anyof that happened.
Now heres what forensics showed: No hesitation wounds! Most people who stab themselves take their shirts off and you see marks where they try to get the courage up to plunge the knife. But none were present. And the knife was pushed in hard enough to penetrate the breast plate not once but twice which is even more baffling to professionals who have studied suicides. Especially since there was NO ILLICIT DRUGS OR ALCOHOL IN HIS SYSTEM at autopsy. There were prescibed antianxiety and antipsychotics in small therapeutic doses which would have balanced his moods and prevented suicidal ideations.
Then theres the shower that chiba took and the handling of the knife . I think the two events happened the other way around i think she handled the knife then thats why she had to take a shower. I think she had blood on her hands and other areas possibly clothes but they never searched and thats why she took the knife out because if he survived he might tell or because ahe meant to kill him all along and to explain why her finger prints and the grip prints on the knife. And you had an extremely gullible police dept? Or a paid one? Who knows its still an open case just so everyone knows. Its not ruled as a suicide and because its undetermined they had to investigate it as a murder. They just did’nt try very hard. Fucked up right?

Bella Bambina

Police should be held accountable for doing a terrible job in their investigation. Family should pursue legal action against the police department as well as Jennifer. This is definitely a case of homicide.